


Literary License

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:48:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elena realizes that Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights has a few similarities to Damon Salvatore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Literary License

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the undetermined future, but includes references to anything up through 2x16, and speculation as to what might happen beyond that.

  
**Literary License: _to change the details of a story for purpose of theme,  
clarity, or better storytelling._**   


"See, it was just about preserving you long enough to serve you up on a silver platter," Katherine smirks as she stands over Elena's prone body.

Elena is tempted to just let the fear run through her, but she has contemplated this too many times during the last six months to feel anything but resignation. Klaus's demise has been traded for Elijah's if need be, and one way or another, someone is bound to kill her.

She is prepared to die. What she's not prepared for is Katherine, who had worked hard to convince her, Stefan, and Damon that her intentions were honorable, to turn so suddenly. She knows Damon never believed it, but Stefan had become convinced, and if Elena's honest, so had she. (She realizes now that had been her futile alignment with Stefan over Damon, a concentrated effort to prove her allegiance to the brother she'd promised her heart to, and not the one who she seemed to agree with more and more often, even when his solutions included the words _kill them_.)

She's also not prepared for her last regretful thought process to be so clearly about Damon. She wishes she could apologize for not deferring to him, for making him angry with her _Pollyanna_ ways, for breaking his heart all over again by not being there anymore—

It's that item that forces her eyes closed. She doesn't want to watch Katherine put a stake to her chest, or whatever way she'll choose to end Elena's life; instead she focuses her final thoughts on Damon's eyes—full of pain, anguish, and yes, love for her—and she hopes if nothing else, her death will bring him fully back to his humanity.

Maybe losing her will save him. Maybe the sacrifice that she has always been destined to make will not just break the Sun and the Moon Curse, but so many of the other impediments of being a vampire.

It would be the moral of the story, wouldn't it? She dies, and Damon finally lives. It's so poetic, like something out of a novel—a theme that could be discussed endlessly in English class, something to argue out and theorize and write term papers about.

Her eyes fly open when Katherine screams and then her vampire doppelganger falls to the ground beside her and Elena sees him, standing over her like the hero he never wanted to be.

Damon Salvatore just staked Katherine Pierce for Elena Gilbert.

* * *

His hands wrap around her shoulders and haul her to her feet, crushing her against his chest in what one might consider a hug, but it's not. There's some element to it that borders on caring, but there is also too much agitated breathing and a fevered whisper, "We've got to get the hell out of here," and his lips are against her forehead and then her cheek and briefly, even her mouth, but Elena doesn't have time to consider any of it.

He moves at the speed of light, and she goes with him because she has no choice.

Then she's suddenly in Stefan's arms, and the three of them climb in Damon's car, along with Caroline, and drive away. Elena doesn't know where they're going, and she wants to ask, but finds out Bonnie is fine, that the Witch Energy-Channeling Project had worked, and that Klaus is dead. It all spills quickly from Caroline's lips, and the relief of it swamps Elena in a maniacal wave, forcing sobs up her throat and tears from her eyes.

She hears Damon ask, "Is she hurt, and I didn't even fucking notice?"

Caroline answers. "She's just crashing, that's all. It's hard being the savior of Mystic Falls, you know."

Stefan croons in her ear and rocks her back and forth, and Elena accepts his comfort, but she wants something else. (Maybe someone else?)

She thinks maybe that's part of what causes her tears.

* * *

Days later, Bonnie and Caroline show up for a girls' night and Bonnie holds a DVD in front of Elena's face. "Look what I found! It's a new remake of _Wuthering Heights_ with that guy from _Inception!_ Your favorite! This is bound to cheer you up!"

Elena just gives her a look. "Have you never read Wuthering Heights?" she asks her best friend.

Bonnie and Caroline exchange looks. "No, why?"

"Isn't it like Pride and Prejudice?" Caroline asks. "They don't get together until the end of the story?"

"It's a tragedy, you guys! I mean, yeah it has a happy ending, but the main characters both die, and it's their children who find a better way!"

"Not a cheer-you-up kind of movie, then?" Caroline asks, taking the DVD from Bonnie's hand to read the back.

"I'm sorry, Elena," Bonnie says. "I didn't realize..."

"We can always watch _The Notebook!_ " Caroline pipes up. "We'll just turn it off before the old people die!"

Elena groans and jerks the DVD from Caroline's fingers. "Absolutely not!"

She's not sure why she's sad. She knows she should be happy. She knows everyone expects her to be ecstatic. She's free. Nobody's hunting for her. She and Stefan can finally have a normal, happy, event-free relationship.

It's not that she craves danger, exactly, but the realization that she sort of misses the excitement of all of it is something she keeps to herself. She's glad everyone is safe, that nobody needs to die for any reason.

But deep inside herself, she knows.

It's been two weeks since Katherine died. Since Katherine was killed. Since Damon murdered Katherine.

Stefan comes by to see if she wants to go out with him and Caroline; they're going to shoot pool at The Grill. (He'd also told her that his brother had hinted that he would leave Mystic Falls soon. "He said there's no reason to stay," Stefan repeated like a parrot, his melancholy impersonation of Damon sort of haunting.)

She said no, she didn't feel like it. The weather is awful, it's been storming for a couple days, and she really didn't want to go out in it.

Not for Stefan, anyway.

Before she even thinks it through entirely, she's shrugging into her jacket and running down the stairs. She encounters Jeremy and Bonnie at the front door, they come in laughing and kissing, and she stops to watch them for a second. They are totally carefree, unashamed, enraptured with each other, and she remembers when she felt that way, or when she at least thought that's how it would be with her and Stefan if they could ever find a peaceful moment.

And yet, here she was, peaceful moments pelting her like rain, without the results she expected.

"Hey," her brother says, noticing her. "Where you off to?"

"I'm going to the Boarding House," she answers truthfully. They don't know that Caroline and Stefan are at The Grill.

"Drive safe," Bonnie says. "It's really coming down out there."

"I will, thanks," Elena says, going out into the deluge.

It's the perfect setting, really. The gloomy weather just adds to the mood. She drives to the Boarding House, thinking of Heathcliff and Cathy, comparing Damon and Katherine to them unapologetically.

She'd watched that movie, the one based on her favorite novel, and she'd felt as though someone were thumping her upside the head with literary allusions. For goodness' sake, her name was _Katherine_. Spelled differently, but so what? They had destroyed each other, Heathcliff and Cathy, and Elena had had to turn the movie off in the middle much to Caroline's protests and Bonnie's bewilderment.

"You guys," she said, looking at her two best friends. "Don't you see it? Heathcliff is the original Damon Salvatore. It's so obvious!"

They'd looked at her like they didn't recognize her, Caroline confused, and Bonnie suspicious. She'd ended up saying, "Nevermind," and shooing them into the kitchen for ice cream. (Then they'd watched _The Notebook_. You could take the vampire out of the girl, but you would never be able to take the girl out of the vampire.)

When she gets to the Boarding House, it's all lit up. She has no idea what to expect, and she wonders if Damon's girlfriend Andie will be there. She hadn't even considered that possibility in her mad dash, and now she feels very foolish.

She supposes she can always pretend she and Stefan got their wires crossed.

When she goes inside, she finds him alone, reading in the library. He glances up when she comes in the doorway. "Hello, Elena," he says.

She raises a hand and grips the doorjamb until her fingers turn white. What is she going to say? _Don't leave town, Damon. Don't let Katherine destroy you. I'm sorry you had to kill the love of your life to save me, even if she was a heinous bitch who deserved to die._

Yeah, none of those really work.

So she settles for, "Hello, Damon."

She walks into the room and peruses some of the books on the shelf nearest her, but she notices he keeps his eyes on her. "Stefan's not here, but you know that already, don't you?" he asks, shutting the book he'd been reading and setting it on the table next to him.

He picks up a glass of something amber-colored, and Elena wishes she had a drink to amp up her courage, or her stupidity. At this point, either one would be welcome.

"Yes, I know," she answers, turning to face him. She leans against the book shelf, and suddenly the words flow. "Have you ever read Wuthering Heights?"

He thinks for moment, then nods. "Yes, years ago--probably when it first came out. I think we've got a first edition around here somewhere. Why? Do you want to borrow it?"

"Actually, I have your first edition. Stefan gave it to me, right after we first met, because I told him it's my favorite."

His lips twist slightly. "Oh, well, of course he did. Good, I'm glad someone who appreciates it so much has it."

"Call of the Wild isn't your favorite book is it?"

His eyebrows go up. "What?"

"Remember? You told Bonnie that was your favorite book. But it's not. Gone With the Wind is."

He finishes his drink and then sets the tumbler down on the table next to his book. "What makes you think that?" he asks.

"It was in your room, by your bed. I saw it when Rose...I saw it in there."

"What are you doing here, Elena? Do you want to start a book club with me? _Classics for Dummies?_ Something of that sort?"

She takes a step forward, forgetting the railing that separates the rest of the room from the bookshelves. It stops her progress and she looks down at it. The dark wood is finely polished, just like everything in this house. It's old, but well kept, and she can't help but think so many things in life are just metaphors for everything that's important.

"I've been thinking, a lot. About Katherine. About everything that happened. And I just thought it would be appropriate for me to say thank you, properly. Thank you for killing her to protect me. And please, don't be sorry. Be glad that you rid the world of her horribleness. And don't let it drag you down. Don't let her choices control your fate."

By the time she finishes her monologue, Damon's on his feet, but he hasn't moved any closer to her. He looks at her for a long moment before turning away, picking up his empty glass, and just staring down into it. "I think maybe your critical thinking skills are causing you to confuse fact with fiction."

She finally gets brave enough to move around the railing and walks over to him, but she doesn't get too close. "No, Damon, I--"

He turns then, back towards her, and she can tell by the surprised expression on his face that he didn't know she'd moved closer. But he interrupts her anyway with, "I don't regret it. Not for a second."

Her breath catches because his face isn't hard, the way it normally is when he's protecting himself. He's almost...open. Almost. There's this sense of hesitation between them, and Elena wants to step closer to him yet again, but she's afraid. She doesn't want to be rejected; she knows if he does thwart her advances it will hurt in a way it never has before. It will be more personal to her, because of the way she feels about him. (Because she's acknowledged how she feels.)

Her lips tremble into a smile that never fully forms, and she says softly, "I'm glad."

"What, you're worried I'm going to off myself? I enjoy my scotch too much. Plus, I'd rather go out fighting, not just take my ring off and _poof_."

Elena shakes her head. Though that's how Heathcliff had severed his pain, it had never occurred to her that Damon would end his life. She only worries that he'll retreat back into the emotionless monster she first knew. She doesn't know how to say that to him, though, so she says, "Stefan said you were thinking of leaving Mystic Falls."

He shrugs and squints one eye at her. "What do you care?"

Offended, Elena stands up straighter. "I care, Damon. You know I care!"

He smirks a little, but she can tell his heart's not in it. "Face it, Elena. Your life will be complicated enough with one vampire boyfriend. You don't need two."

"You're my friend, Damon. I would miss you."

He flinches, and turns away from her, dropping his empty glass back on the table top. "Yes, because Cathy married Edgar Linton, not Heathcliff. It's important to get the details right."

"What?" she asks. She takes another step towards him, but when his eyes come back around to her, they freeze her progression completely.

"You were comparing me and Katherine to Heathcliff and Cathy, right? But don't you see, Elena, that it's really you, me, and Stefan? And Stefan is Edgar, the much better and obvious choice."

Her throat grows tight and she clutches at it with her fingers, as though she can keep the truth from lodging there. "Cathy makes Edgar miserable, too," she says, and then she lifts her chin. "Is that really how you see me? Intent on making you and Stefan unhappy?"

"Do you really see me as someone who would leave you, and then wait until you married my rival and show up just in time to torment you with it until you died?"

"It's not—no, Damon. It's not like all the details are exact. There are just some similarities there—the way you loved Katherine, the devotion. Her betrayal. The pain you must feel from killing her, even if it was the right thing."

"Cathy and Heathcliff's love for each other is what destroys them—but don't worry, Katherine never loved me, and by the time I killed her, I didn't love her anymore. And you know that. You know it, even though I didn't let you remember it."

"Remember what?"

"Exactly."

"Damon," she says agitatedly. "Don't speak to me in riddles. What are you talking about?"

He laughs, circling around her like he's going to walk out of the room in the middle of their discussion. "You're the one with your literary license, Elena. Trying to make me fit into some archetype so you can feel better about the way things have gone."

"I'm not trying to make myself feel better!" she shouts. "I'm trying to make _you_ feel better. I'm trying to make you admit that you feel anything at all!" She grabs his arm because he _is_ trying to walk away from something she wants to finish.

Once and for all.

"Don't," is all he says, and he tugs against her hold. He could easily break the contact, but he doesn't, and she wraps her hand more tightly around his wrist.

"What would have happened if Cathy had waited for Heathcliff? Do you think they would have been happy?"

He doesn't say anything for a long moment, but his eyes soften, and something comes over his face that she's never seen before. "They would have been with the person they should have been with. If that didn't make them happy, I suppose it's their own fault."

Elena drops his arm then, and takes a step back. The predator she met that first day she ever saw Damon Salvatore flashes before her eyes, but then something else, like a forgotten memory tickles at the back of her mind, and she realizes what it is. It's passion, it's devotion, it's all the things she knows are on the pages of her favorite book, and it was in the movie too, between the actors.

And it's right here, between her and Damon, on both sides, in equal parts.

His hands surround her face. He puts his mouth to hers, not kissing her anymore than he had the night he killed Katherine on her behalf. It's more of a touchstone, a slight bit of contact that conveys more than a night of wild lovemaking.

"Be happy, Elena. That's what Heathcliff should have wanted for Cathy; above his own pleasure and satisfaction, hers should have been what mattered most to him."

He presses his lips to her forehead then and walks away.

* * *

At some point, Damon had grown to like manipulating people. It made him feel powerful, it drove out the helpless sensation caused by death, and then a vampire's life thrust upon him, and of course, his impotency at getting Katherine out of the tomb that she wasn't really even in anyway.

But when he told Stefan he was thinking of leaving Mystic Falls, he really hadn't had any ulterior motives. He assumed it would make his brother happy, though if Stefan's creased forehead was any indication, it really hadn't.

He did not expect Stefan to tell Elena, and he did not expect Elena to care.

Really. He didn't.

What he does find interesting, though, is that she doesn't _just_ care. She has a whole thesis in her head for why he might go, why he should stay, and she quite obviously doesn't want him to.

He's never been so conflicted in his whole 168 years.

So he knocks on Alaric's door, and tells his friend the whole long thing. Ric is pensive, and he needs to shave. He's still working things out with Jenna (who isn't as forgiving as Damon supposed her to be), and so he has that whipped, depressed thing going on. (It's what human men go through because they can't pick up a bunch of sorority girls to feed off like a vampire would to drown his sorrows.)

"I don't know, Damon. Maybe leaving town is running away. Maybe you should stay and fight?"

Damon scoffs. "Fight for what? Fight a losing battle? Stand beside my saint of a brother and be found lacking? Why the fuck would I do that?"

"Because you love her."

Oh, yeah. _That._

"She just feels guilty about Katherine, and what she thinks I feel about it."

" _What_ do you feel about it?" Ric asks, sitting up from his slouched position on his sofa. "I mean, really? You did kill a woman you spent a century and a half pining for. It's got to do something to you. If I killed Isobel, I'd have, you know, feelings about it."

Damon gets up and walks over to Ric's fridge, which isn't far from the living room since his apartment is the size of a postage stamp. He pulls out a beer for himself and tosses one to Ric as well. "What do I feel?" He shrugs. "Relief. Vindication. _Yippee, ki-yi-ay, mother fucker_."

"Damon," Ric says, and he actually reminds Damon of Elena a little because of the disapproving expression on his face.

"I'm not sorry, Ric. That's the truth. Do I feel regret? Nope, not even a little bit. Elena's the one who deserves to live, not Katherine."

"You don't have to regret an action to be sad about it," Ric says. "I mean, I'm sorry I lied to Jenna, but I don't regret trying to protect her. They are two different things. Maybe Elena is just worried that you're hurting, and because she cares about you, she wants to stop your hurting. That's what it's like when you care for someone. Their pain is your pain, even if what caused the pain means nothing to them. Get it?"

Damon takes a long drink from his beer bottle, and contemplates a little. Of course he knows what Ric is talking about, because it seems like every little thing that caused Elena pain reverberates inside him. That had started when he found out Isobel was her birth mother, and essentially it hasn't stopped since then.

He just never expected her to reciprocate it. (Or admit that she reciprocated it, anyway.)

He finishes his beer without realizing how quickly he'd sucked it down, and then he stands up. "Thanks for the chat, Ric."

He gets to the door before Ric's voice stops him. "For what it's worth, _I_ don't want you to leave town either."

Damon hesitates with his hand on the doorknob. "I think it's time to move on," he says, and that's the truth, too. He's got to get all these crazy thoughts out of his head, because he knows it can only end one way.

He's read the book, after all.

* * *

Two days later, Stefan invites him to go on a road trip to New York. "We're gonna go catch a concert in the city, and—"

"Who's 'we'?" Damon interrupts.

"Me, Caroline, Bonnie, Jeremy, Elena, Jenna, Alaric."

Damon contemplates the couples ratio, and immediately knows he's not interested. "What concert?" he asks, trying to look like he's actually considering the trip.

"Justin Bieber."

Stefan tries to deadpan it, but he cracks before Damon can fully process that he can't be serious. "Just kidding. We're going to see Bon Jovi. They're touring with Daughtry again, so I thought everyone would enjoy the show."

Damon appreciates his brother's attempts at being completely normal. Really, he does. But he's never liked Bon Jovi (maybe their music was just a bit too optimistic for him, okay?) and he doesn't care for Daughtry either.

"Eh," he says, shrugging. "Maybe if it was someone from like _now_ , I'd go. Bon Jovi's, you know, so 1987."

"You sure?" Stefan asks. "Everyone wants you to come."

"Everyone?" Damon smirks.

"Even Bonnie," Stefan says with a nod.

"Thanks, but no. I'm still wrapping a few things up here so I can decide where I'm going to jetset to. So, not this time."

Stefan slaps his shoulder. "Okay, but next time, we'll go see someone you'd want to see. _Who_ would you want to see?"

"Nobody you've ever heard of," Damon says with slight condescension.

"Oh, come on," Stefan says. "Elena's gotten me to listen to a lot of 'current' people."

"Does Elena listen to Sleeperstar, or Mat Kearney? How about Mumford and Sons?"

Stefan's face lights up. "Yes, she totally has Mumford and Sons in her car! She made me listen to this song about a lionboy or something."

" _Little Lion Man_ ," Damon corrects automatically.

"Yeah, right, whatever. So yes, we'll go see them sometime, okay? Wherever you end up, we'll meet somewhere and do it, okay?"

Damon only nods because he knows it will make Stefan happy, and strangely, these days he wants to do that, at least in theory.

He doesn't expect to really ever see any of them ever again. When he leaves, it will be for good. It's better that way.

Better for everyone.

* * *

Stefan and his gang leave the next morning and Damon putters around the Boarding House, thinks about calling Andie, then decides against it. (They've pretty much cooled off, and really it's just one more loose end that's already tied up.)

He realizes he really hasn't been in the library since he was there with Elena, and it bugs him that he's avoiding the room. It's always been his favorite place in the house, but now he can't go in there without wondering what would have happened if he hadn't walked out three days before.

Somehow he became pretty good at making sure she doesn't have any choices to make, and he's sort of pissed at himself about it. So he just keeps to his room, because there aren't many memories of her here, except with Rose.

He hates how much time he's spent thinking about it. For her bringing it up to him, for him finding that they had more than one copy of Wuthering Heights in the house. (Apparently the one Stefan gave Elena was under the alias Emily Bronte used back in the day, but they'd also acquired one from some years later published with her real name.)

So, he re-read it. (He's got loads of time, you know.)

He's not an idiot, so he can see the parallels she drew from fairly easily, as well as the ones that occurred to him while they fought about it, but there is that little bit there that she wouldn't get, that she couldn't possibly understand.

Heathcliff's fear.

Damon's pretty sure he gets why the guy left, and why he came back too late. He did it all on purpose because he never felt worthy of Catherine. He'd always been told he wasn't good enough, and her preference for Edgar only reinforced that, and fuck Damon for being a literary genius, but _hello_. It's all painfully similar, even more so than Elena thinks.

As if thinking about her conjures her up, he does a double take when something catches in his peripheral vision. There she is, standing in the doorway of his bedroom, and he's positive he's fallen asleep standing up.

"Hi," she says.

"Um...hi?" he responds. He was about to sit down in the chaise-lounge with a new book, but he hesitates as he looks at her, waiting for Stefan to come in behind her. "You guys have a breakdown in the driveway, or something?"

Elena shakes her head and walks all the way into the room. "No. I didn't go with them. I don't really like Bon Jovi."

Damon snorts. "Me, either."

"So," she says, pulling her sweater off as she moves closer to him. "You still planning on leaving town?"

She throws the piece of clothing over the arm of the chair he's standing beside, and he's faced with her in a simple white t-shirt and a pair of old jeans that hugs her ass a little too sweetly. He jerks his eyes up to hers and she's smiling at him just a bit, the corners of her lips slightly raised. "Um, yeah. Yup, just, you know, mapping a course for the horizon." He lifts his arm up, indicating said horizon, pointing somewhere to the left of their bodies. (He feels like a total idiot.)

"Any particular place?" she asks and she moves so she's standing right in front of him. She pulls the book he's holding out of his hands and he literally thinks, _Praise Jesus it's not Wuthering Heights_.

"No, not really," he says, swallowing nervously. She's too close, and the look on her face is completely disconcerting. "Maybe the West Coast, or Alaska. I hear it's really beautiful, and believe it or not, I've never been there. Alaska, I mean. Of course I've been to the Wes—"

She tosses the book on the chair with one hand and puts a finger to his lips with the other. "Shhhh," she says, and for the first time in two weeks and three days, he wonders if maybe Katherine _isn't_ dead.

Because this can't possibly be Elena.

She holds his gaze steadily, however, and he notices the faintest trace of pink highlighting her cheeks; he can hear her heart thump-thumping against her ribcage. She steps closer until there is no space between their bodies and puts her hands on his shoulders. She draws in a shaky breath, licks her lips, and lifts herself up on her toes so that her mouth is against his.

He's frozen under her touch, torn between the need for survival and the _want_ , the intensity of every emotion she stirs inside him swelling up until it blocks all other thoughts, instincts, or possible escape routes.

It's just him and Elena, and his bed is fifteen feet behind them, and Stefan is gone, and she's _here with him_.

He doesn't even remember putting his hands on her ass, but she's suddenly plastered against the front of him, and he's kissing her so hard that they're both gasping for air, but they never separate entirely to get sufficient oxygen.

He feels like their clothes melt away in a beam of light, and then he has her naked, on his bed, under him, and around him. Her legs tangle with his so that the slide of her smooth flesh against his hair-roughened thighs and calves might be the most erotic thing he's ever experienced—that is, until she pushes him over on to his back and works her way down his chest. Her mouth visits various destinations across his torso, but when her tongue dips into his navel, he says her name, half-groaning, half-growling. He wants to tell her that she better not tease him, but he can't get the words out and then her hand wraps around his cock and her lips slide over the head and he knows he's going to lose his fucking mind.

Because this? This should not be happening.

One of his hands reaches for and grasps a good amount of her hair, but he doesn't allow the other one to touch her. (He wants her to set the pace, because he knows he'd have no class and would probably just shove himself down her throat.) Instead, he finds a place on the headboard and digs his fingers into the wood until it splinters under his grip.

She stays with him through the whole thing, though, her lips and tongue vastly talented, and her teeth make an appearance at just the right moment. He probably shouts something really offensive when he comes, but he can't remember anything except the heat streaking through his thighs and spine and she swallows everything, smiling up at him with an expression he knows he never saw on Katherine's face. Her pure joy at pleasing him isn't calculated and it makes his heart figuratively explode inside his chest in tandem with his orgasm.

He's still gasping for air as she climbs back up his body and their lips meet. He can taste himself on her tongue, and it makes him fairly certain he will never get over her. He thought he would love Katherine forever, but that was only because he hadn't met Elena yet.

She keeps smiling, he can feel it every time their lips come together or pull apart, and he's caressing every part of her he can reach, sinking his fingers into the wet warmth between her legs until she's squirming against him restlessly.

He gently turns her on to her back and then gets his hips between her legs. His recovery time as a vampire is pretty much instantaneous, but he can't help but think even if he were human, Elena would have this effect on him.

Her arms wrap around his neck and her legs curl around his waist, directing him inside her, as though that hadn't been his own intention. He's never been held so tightly, or at least not by someone he's wanted to hold on to in return. He kisses her now and again, but mostly he keeps his eyes open because he wants to see her face when she loses it. He slings an arm down to hook her knee over the crook of his elbow, and pulls her leg up so that their position changes just slightly.

Elena groans his name and her hips start to rise more quickly against his. Her eyes look black with passion, and Damon times his thrusts so that as they approach the peak of her pleasure, she gets the right amount of pressure in just the right spot. She flushes a deep pink and her panting breath goes into this high-pitched keening that shows how desperate she is—how desperate he's making her—so when he finally gives it to her good, her fingernails dig into the skin of his neck so deeply that it almost hurts.

He can feel every little ripple of her orgasm around him, and his own release hits him unexpectedly, hurling him with her into the abyss. Their mouths come together and they ride it out, kissing madly, and the sweaty mess of it is somehow the purest thing Damon's ever participated in.

He collapses next to her, carefully removing his weight from her, but she turns up on her side, and her leg slides over his to keep them close together. He loses time somewhere in there, and when he becomes aware again, she's just lying against him, her fingers tracing his shoulder and biceps lovingly.

She whispers, "Stay with me," and he thinks she means more than just here, in this bed, for tonight, but he doesn't say anything. He just pulls her closer, his palm settling over one perfect buttcheek.

He closes his eyes, not in sleep this time, but in pure terror. This was never supposed to happen; not _ever_ , and he has a million questions as to why she, Elena, who would not even admit that she wanted to kiss him six months ago, would come here and literally seduce him right out of all his good intentions.

(The only good intentions he's probably ever had.)

More time passes, and just when he's certain she's fallen to sleep, her voice penetrates the quiet of the room. "Tell me why Gone With the Wind is your favorite book." It's not a request, he can tell from her tone. She thinks she's entitled to something now, and that's as scary as it is true.

He rebuffs her, anyway. (That's what he does best, right?) "Who says it's my favorite?"

She pinches the skin over his belly, and though it doesn't hurt, he allows it to serve its purpose. This will be the gift he gives her, the one thing that she'll get to understand about everything that's happened in her life since she met him and his brother. "Alright, fine," he says, pressing his lips to the top of her head, which is tucked under his chin. "Three reasons," he says. "One, it's set during the time I lived—my human years. Think what you will of that, I'm not going to explain it. Two, Scarlett's scrappy. Spunky. A real bitch." He hesitates just a moment, and then he finishes, "And three. He leaves at the end. He grows a set and he walks out."

Elena's quiet for a moment, and then she says in a soft, unassuming voice, "And he doesn't give a damn."

It freaks him out how well she knows him, how he can really never hide anything from her.

Which is why, of course, he'd made her forget in the first place.

He can do it now, if he wants. He can pull the necklace from her throat, roll her on to her back again and fuck her until she can't walk, and then he can make her forget any of it ever happened.

The problem is, he doesn't want her to forget. He wants her to remember, because it's all she's going to have of him.

He runs his hand up her side, brushing her hair out of the way as he goes, and then he cups her cheek in his palm. She falls back slightly, and he follows her, letting his body be cradled by the natural fit of hers beneath him. He kisses her chastely, until her tongue initiates something deeper, and then her hands are clutching at his lower back, guiding him back inside her so that they're connected again.

She says once more, "Stay with me."

And so he lies. "I'll be with you forever."

Her hands move up his body and find his, bringing their arms together on either side of her head, linking their fingers tightly as he moves inside her. There are tears in her eyes, so Damon closes his and puts his face against her throat.

Who is he kidding? He knows she knows he's lying. She wouldn't be Elena if she didn't.

* * *

He leaves Mystic Falls early the next morning, while she's still sleeping in his bed. He throws away his cell phone, and makes sure no one, not Ric, not Stefan, not Elena, has any way of contacting him.

He's no Rhett Butler though. He leaves because he cares too much, not because he doesn't care at all.

He hopes that's the one truth Elena knows without him saying it.

* * *

"I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but..." Bonnie pauses and looks over at Elena as they're laying on her bed. "I could do a locater spell, you know. It would probably work with Stefan's blood even more accurately to find his brother than when I used Jer's blood to find you."

Elena shakes her head. "I'm not going to stalk him, Bonnie, though I appreciate your willingness to help. He left for a bunch of reasons; he has to come back on his own, not because I go and find him and make him do it."

Bonnie frowns. "Then why are you lying here all depressed?"

Elena curls her arms around the pillow under head. "Because I miss him. I miss him so much. And every day that he's gone..." She huffs out a sigh. "I have to believe he'll come back, but some days are harder than others to have that much faith."

Graduation has come and gone, and the summer has passed in a flurry of humidity and parties at the cemetery, and the same ol' same ol' of the Mystic Falls teen set.

Elena has gone through the motions of all of it, worried she'll regret it later if she doesn't enjoy it now, but the truth is, she's _so_ over it. She's ready to go to college and move on to the next phase of life. And she really doesn't like seeing Caroline and Stefan mooning over each other. She's glad he's rebounded so quickly, and she's glad that her best friend is so happy, but it just rubs salt in the wound of her own making.

(She never realized how alone she could feel.)

She had ended things with Stefan first, and jumped right into something with Damon second (which had been the right order of doing things), hoping that the action would be enough, but it hadn't. He'd still had to leave, to go do whatever it is that he needs to do, and while most of the time she's completely confident that he'll come back, four months have passed without a single solitary word from him to any of them.

(She really thought he'd at least contact his brother; and Stefan had promised to tell her if he did.)

But they haven't heard anything.

"Look," Bonnie says, drawing Elena's attention back to her. "We'll just do the locater spell so you know he's alive. For peace of mind, not so you can go hunting for him." Her hand wraps around Elena's arm. "What about that?"

"No," Elena says firmly. "He'll be back. I know he will."

Bonnie looks skeptical, but that mixes with some form of pity, and it stings Elena to see it. "How do you know he'll come back?" she asks.

In all the months, weeks, days of lamentation that her friends have suffered good-naturedly through with her, this question has never come up before. Maybe up until now, they thought she was right, that something in her parting moments with Damon had assured her of his return. But this voicing of the question actually buoys Elena up instead of making her feel hopeless.

Because she knows the answer. "Because he's Heathcliff," she says.

Bonnie scoots over closer to Elena on the bed, pressing their cheeks together. "But you're not Cathy," she says. "You're going to wait, aren't you?"

Elena squeezes her eyes shut when tears prick at the corners. "As long as it takes," she whispers.

* * *

She gets accepted to Georgia State University in Atlanta, and Jenna, Alaric, and Jeremy help her move down there the last week of August. She shares a dorm with a girl named Laura, who is from Florida. They aren't best friends, but they get along well enough.

Elena throws herself into her studies, and because she's got no boyfriend, and nobody trying to kill her, she gets straight A's. College is harder than high school, but it's not impossible. She's always been smart, and capable, and she does enjoy school, even if sometimes she gets distracted by the empty space in her life.

It's not that she isn't involved. She goes to football games, and parties, she studies with study groups and gets involved with an Animal Rights Activist Club. She's on the go all the time, but she manages to keep in touch with all her friends from Virginia (Bonnie's going to Virginia Tech so she's not too far from Jeremy as he finishes high school, and Caroline and Stefan have moved to New York so she can go to NYU, while Matt's in California on a football scholarship).

But still. There is a very Damon-shaped hole in her heart and her life. It's ironic that just when she embraced everything she felt for him and made a place for him, he left. She'd barely had any time to understand just what she felt, but the more time that passes, the deeper she feels it.

Watching Caroline and Stefan had stirred jealousy like nothing before in her life ever had, and it had nothing to do with wanting Stefan back. She could just see how easy it was between them, how they finished each other's sentences, how they were so in sync.

She watched them have what she'd only discovered and enjoyed for about a twelve-hour period with Damon.

It's not like she hadn't known he would leave. In those precious moments they'd shared, there had been tenderness and wildness, and everything wonderful she could ever imagine, but there had also been fear and hesitancy on his part.

He just couldn't let go like she had, and she supposes that that is just about right. He had a lot more baggage than she did (something like 150 years more). That's why she hadn't been angry when she woke alone in his giant bed. She hadn't been surprised either, but she had rolled over, buried her face in the pillow that still held his head-print and cried. Cried for his pain, for the things that had happened to him to make him so unable to fully connect, cried for all that he'd lost, and for all that he seemed willing to give up even though he wanted it so desperately.

Because she knows he wants her; she could feel it in every touch of his lips and hands across her body, but more than that, she'd seen it in his eyes and heard it in his voice when he said her name, breathing his passion out across her skin.

For all the worry she felt over his love for Katherine being swallowed up in his need to preserve her life, she learned in those hours locked away with him in a vortex of sex and hunger unlike anything she'd ever experienced before that whatever he'd felt for Katherine paled in comparison to what he felt for her. It gave meaning to the camouflaged statements he'd made about how she knew he didn't love Katherine anymore, because she finally admitted to herself that she had known for sometime that he loved her, Elena. Not just because Isobel said so, or any number of other people, but because Damon had told her.

He'd told her and then he'd compelled her to forget.

The reason she knows she was compelled is because it only happened to her twice--on the same day. Once when Elijah took her necklace away, and once when Damon gave it back to her.

All she remembers of that moment is the aching emptiness left behind. The deduction had come because that's how she felt the morning she woke up to find him gone, and it's how she's felt fundamentally without him every day since. She hasn't given up, and she hasn't stopped living, but she knows without him, it will never be quite right.

Because in some ways, she _is_ Cathy. Now that she has crossed over into loving Damon Salvatore, she cannot go back. Even if she wanted to.

That morning, after he'd gone, she climbed from the bed, wrapping the sheet about her sore and naked body to keep his scent all around her. She'd found, next to Gone With the Wind on the nightstand, a newer copy of Wuthering Heights than the one she had. Her breath had caught, and she felt more tears rush to the edges of her eyelids. Slowly she reached for the book, flipping through it until she found her favorite passage. In the complete silence of the Boarding House, she read it with different eyes, with the eyes of a woman who had given everything to the man she loved, only to realize it had not been enough to hold him.

>  _...but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger..._

Elena doesn't think of herself as particularly dramatic. That's Caroline's niche, but in that moment, wrapped in Damon Salvatore's bedclothes, she learned that the events in novels don't just take the readers away to magical places, or on romantic adventures. They actually happen; that's why people write about them.

So she sat and cried some more, and then she got up, showered in Damon's giant bathroom, did the laundry, remade his bed and cleaned everything up. She stacked the two books on the bedside table in a haphazardly artistic fashion, and then she went home.

She'd gone home and prepared to wait.

* * *

Christmas break comes, and she goes home to Mystic Falls for the holidays. Things are normal and wonderful at home, Jenna and Ric are engaged now, and Jeremy and Bonnie are still going strong.

Elena sits amongst their coupledom and tries not to gag.

She calls Caroline on Christmas Eve. She and Stefan hadn't left New York because of a snow storm, and Elena thinks it's funny. They are supernatural beings, undoubtedly they could hazard the weather, but they don't; instead they sound as if they couldn't be cozier in their tiny apartment in the city.

She chats with her friend for a good thirty minutes before she asks. "So, has Stefan heard from anyone in particular?"

She knows the answer before Caroline's sad retort carries through the line.

Hanging up a while later, she knows that the holidays themselves have no particular meaning to Damon, but it eats at her that nothing seems to drive him to make contact.

She barely sleeps that night, and it's not in anticipation of Santa Claus.

She wakes Bonnie early, sneaking into her brother's room to drag her from his grasp.

"I want you to do the locater spell," she whispers.

Bonnie's sleepy eyes fight to open entirely. "How can we do that? Stefan's in New York."

Elena realizes just how desperate she's become, because that hadn't even occurred to her. Tears assault her and she covers her face with her hands.

Bonnie wraps her hand around Elena's wrist and tugs her into the bed with Jeremy and her. Jeremy grunts and then slides over to make room as Bonnie whispers, "Scoot." She wraps her arms around Elena and holds her while she cries.

"Waz'th'matter?" Jeremy mutters.

"She misses Damon," Bonnie says softly.

Elena feels her brother's arms surround the both of them, and while she's cocooned in the love of her best friend and her sibling, the support only makes the tears come harder and faster.

"The next time Stefan comes home, I'll do the spell," Bonnie promises.

* * *

Elena meets Tate on the first day of the new semester in Janauary. She's sitting in her new Creative Writing class and he turns around to ask to borrow a pen.

She wouldn't normally even think anything of it as she digs in her bag for an extra writing utensil, but when she looks up and makes eye contact, she almost gasps out loud. He has the bluest, most crystalline eyes she's ever seen on someone who wasn't Damon Salvatore.

"I'm Tate," he says, taking the pen from her hand and then shaking it enthusiastically in greeting.

"I'm Elena," she replies. It's only after he turns back around that she notices she's smiling.

A few days later, she runs into him in the Student Union, and he asks her if can buy her a cup of coffee. She agrees, and they start talking about writing. Before she knows it, she's late for her Calculus class and she dashes off, calling behind her, "See you in class!"

They start exchanging papers when their professor asks them to give each other concrit, and suddenly Tate becomes the person she talks to every day, even the days that they don't have class together.

He kisses her one night toward the end of February in her dorm room while they're studying and she doesn't stop him. In fact, he's got his hand under her shirt before she's overwhelmed by a sense of horror; she pushes him away and sits up on her bed, scrambling for the edge, which isn't hard to find since it's just a dinky, little twin.

"I'm sorry," she gasps, tugging her shirt back down. "I can't do this."

Tate stacks his hands under his head and stays laying on her bed. She looks over her shoulder at him regretfully. "I'm sorry," she says again.

"There's some dude, somewhere, isn't there? Some dude who you just can't get over."

Elena chews her bottom lip and nods at him.

"Where is he, Elena? Why isn't he here with you?"

"It's a long story," she says evasively, getting to her feet.

"You should write about it. Then at least I might get to know why the coolest girl I've ever met is only ever going to be my study buddy."

"I'm really sorry, Tate," she says and he waves her off as he sits up.

"Stop saying that," he says, and she can tell he's not mad. Disappointed, but not angry.

"This probably doesn't help, but if there wasn't the other guy? I'd really like you."

Tate narrows his eyes at her just as her cell phone goes off, and Elena checks it automatically because it's Bonnie's ring tone. "Just a sec, okay?" she asks, switching her phone on. "Hey, Bonnie," she says.

"Damon's in Canada."

"What?" Elena shakes her head in confusion.

"Stefan came to visit me in Blacksburg, and we just did the locater spell. Damon's in Canada."

Elena starts laughing because it's so ludicrous. "Why Canada?" she asks, though she knows Bonnie won't have a clue.

"I don't know, except that the locater spell told us pretty specifically that he's on Prince Edward Island somewhere."

Elena thanks Bonnie, and tells her to tell Stefan that as well. She hangs up the phone and remembers Tate is still standing beside her bed. "Someone you know is visiting Prince Edward Island?" he asks.

Elena laughs again. "Yeah," she says, clutching the phone tightly in her hand, like a lifeline. "The guy. _The one_. He's in Canada."

She can't help herself, she's thinking of Anne and Gilbert and Lucy Maud Montgomery, and she suddenly feels hope surge through her. "It's a sign," she says. "I'm s--"

"I know, I know," Tate mutters. "You're sorry."

* * *

She's walking back to her dorm after her first final during the middle of May. School is almost out and she's going home to Mystic Falls for the summer. She'd thought about getting a job in Atlanta, but really she just wanted to go home for a while. She has fantasies about going up to the Boarding House and reading in the library, or maybe sleeping in Damon's bed. (What? It's not like he's using it.) She knows Stefan won't mind, assuming he and Caroline are even coming home themselves.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she pulls it out. "I was just thinking about you," she says when she answers Caroline's call.

"Where are you?" Caroline asks urgently.

"I'm at school," Elena says warily. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I just wasn't sure when your finals were over and when you were going home." She has that breezy, happy Caroline sound back now, but Elena's suspicions are raised anyway.

"I'm going home at the end of the week. Seriously, Caroline, what's going on?"

"I've gotta go, I think Stefan heard me!" The line goes dead and Elena stops in the middle of the sidewalk to stare at her phone screen. She's trying to decide if she should call her friend back when something makes her skin prickle. She looks up, and there he is, standing on the path between her and her dorm building.

She loses her breath at first, because even though in her heart she always knew he'd come back, she had stopped telling herself it would be any time soon. And seeing him here, now, in this place, the one place she has with no memories of him--she feels a little wrecked already, because if he breaks her heart again, she's going to kill him for ruining her one Damon-free spot.

Then she realizes: he's real, he's here, and there are only twenty yards between them. She throws her notebook down and runs to him, not even slowing to see if he'll open his arms to her. He has quick reflexes, and she depends on that she jumps up, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips.

He catches her easily enough, the only sign he gives that this is any effort at all is the way his eyes flinch when they look fully into one another's faces.

"You're here," she says, and she can't control the smile on her lips. It's huge, and her face threatens to crack under it.

"I'm here," he says, his voice thick with emotion.

Elena wraps her hands around his neck and smacks her lips over his. "Yay!" she says, and he finally smiles, the flash of white teeth reminding her that she should be scared of him.

But she never has been, not really, not even when she should have been. And now, fear is the last thing that she can feel. Happiness, joy, satisfaction, certainty. All of those things chase away the rest. "Yay," he repeats softly as one of his hands cups her cheek.

"I knew you would come back," she says as he pulls her mouth to his for a real kiss.

"I didn't know," he says when they disengage a moment later.

She wraps her arms tightly around his neck and hugs him, her face burrowing into his neck. "Yes, you did," she whispers.

Elena knows that if Laura hadn't already left for the summer, she would have allowed Damon to compel her dormmate to leave so they could be alone together. As it is, Laura took all of her finals early so she could go on a trip to Mexico with her family, so she's gone, and they have the tiny room all to themselves.

So naturally, Elena assumes that the first thing they will do is have sex, because that's all that is on her mind, but Damon wants to talk.

(Really? She can't even believe it. How did she get to be the guy in this relationship?)

First he apologizes, and then he kisses her again. Then he tells her, "I saw Stefan and Caroline yesterday. They're married, did you know that?"

Elena giggles, because she did know that. Stefan had found someone at the Social Security Office and compelled them to let him have a Social Security number because he wanted to be able to marry Caroline for real, in the eyes of the law. "Crazy, huh?" she asks, and Damon kisses her again.

"They're like, insanely happy," Damon says, shaking his head. "And that apartment they live in, in New York? It makes Ric's place in Mystic Falls look like the Ritz."

When he kisses her for the third time in as many minutes, Elena decides she's not the only one with sex on the brain, so she pushes him back on her bed and tries to take command the way she did before.

"Wait, wait," he says, and his hands grip her shoulders to hold her away from his body. "Elena--"

"Damon--" she repeats back to him in the same tone, and he smiles again, like he can't help it.

"Aren't you, like, mad at me, or something? Don't you want me to make some kind of declaration before we just get to it? Don't you need me to make a promise?"

She straddles his lap, and he stops fighting her so hard when she takes his face in her hands. "I'm furious with you. I've been missing you for one year, three weeks, and five days. But you already made your declaration, when you showed up here, and no, I don't need you to make me a promise. I know you'll never be able to leave me again, even if you really want to."

He purses his lips and rolls his eyes. "You do know that this, right here, is why I left in the first place, right? A man likes to have some secrets. With you, I don't have any."

Elena rubs her lips over his and bumps her zipper against his until she can feel him reacting to her movements. "You have plenty of secrets, Damon. And all the time in the world to tell them to me. What you don't have is a way to hide from me."

His hands slide over her hips and pull her down into him. He's hard beneath her, and her skin grows tight, her need for him clouding her mind and heart until she just can't stop herself from shushing him when he tries to talk again. "Later," she murmurs, placing her lips over his.

When they're naked, and he's inside her, he holds her face in one hand and looks right into her eyes as he says, "I love you."

She arches under him, clutching at him with every part of her body that can hold him to her. "I love you," she whispers in return and she feels it when he finally lets go, in every way.

* * *

"I just have to drop off this paper, check in with the professor, and then I'll be done. You should come with me," Elena says as she brushes her hair.

Damon's been holed up in her dorm room for two days, distracting her completely from her last ditch efforts at studying for these ridiculous things called finals. (If Damon had his way, she'd probably drop out of school immediately, but he's fortunate enough to know that she's never going to do what he says. It's important that he knows that going in.) Now she's about to finish up the last one, and they can pack up the Camaro and head up the road.

Back to Mystic Falls, and all that that means.

(Which, Damon's not really sure what it means, other than he and Elena are together, and according to her, they are never separating ever, _ever_ again.)

"You want me to come with you? Why?"

She smiles at him over her shoulder. "I don't know. It's just romantic, us holding hands, walking across campus. I like the idea of it."

So does he, but he doesn't say anything. He just watches her as she turns back to the little mirror that hangs just inside her closet door. She's wearing a form-fitting burgundy tank top with lace edging, and the same pair of jeans he peeled off of her that day in the Boarding House. He knows because of the way they cling to the curve of her ass, and he wonders if in all those things she knows about him, if she has any idea how much he wants her, like, all the time.

It's an insatiable hunger, one that he denied himself for so long that now, he almost can't understand how he did it.

"What time do you have to be there?" he asks.

"Uh-uh," she says, looking at him as she shuts the closet door. "I can't be late. This professor grades on punctuality. So no funny business."

"Is _funny business_ a euphemism, Miss English Lit Major?"

She flips him off, and he bursts into laughter. He follows her out the door, wrapping his arm around her neck as he presses his lips to her cheek. "I love you, 'Lena."

"I know," she says cockily.

* * *

He waits outside the door of the classroom, because this professor is actually taking roll, on the last day of class, so it's about fifteen minutes before she emerges from the room.

She comes walking out with this boy, and he's smiling at her in a way that Damon knows all too well. He has a moment, one where he calls himself every filthy name he can think of, because what the hell was in his head? Leaving her like that, and just expecting that she'd be there if or when he ever got his shit together?

She could totally be shacked up with this guy, because Damon can tell he'd be all for it.

"So," the kid says. "You're _the one_ , huh?" He gives Damon a once over and Damon looks at Elena, whose grin could not get any bigger.

"Who is this guy?" he asks, jerking a thumb at him.

"This is my friend, Tate," Elena says, turning so she's standing between them like a mediator. "Tate, this is Damon."

Tate extends his hand, and Damon shakes it only because he'd look like a complete dick if he didn't. "Don't blow it, buddy," Tate says, his grip pretty hard for a human who doesn't know he's dealing with a vampire.

Damon wishes he had some snappy comeback, but since this guy is obviously thinking something along the same lines as he is, just from the other side, he nods and says, "I won't."

Just before he walks away, Tate says, more to Elena, but definitely loudly enough that Damon can hear him, "You ought to let him read some of what you wrote."

Elena's grin lessens into a soft smile. "Maybe someday."

* * *

They've been back in Mystic Falls for a week when she finally gets around to being upset with him.

(He knew it was crazy to think they were just fine.)

It happens after they've made love in his bed at the Boarding House. She rolls away from him and suddenly she's crying, and when he leans over her to ask what's wrong, she starts pummeling his chest with her fists, and he just lets her, because _duh_.

He deserves it. What he doesn't deserve is her unconditional love and forgiveness, but soon she's apologizing in some sort of crazy, sob-fest way that ends with him grabbing her arms and pinning them to the mattress above her head.

"Baby, baby, baby," he says until she finally stops shaking her head in agitation and looks into his eyes. "I promise you, you will never wake up here alone, ever again. Not unless you know I'm going to be downstairs cooking you breakfast, and probably not even then, because I'd rather be here with you than down there anyway."

"I love you, Damon, so much," she says, tears on her cheeks, her voice choked. It does something extremely painful to his heart to see and hear her in this way, and so he presses his lips to hers, kissing her soothingly.

"I love you, more than you'll ever know, Elena."

"Then tell me about Katherine," she says, and he can no longer deny her anything.

So they sit up in the middle of his bed and he tells her. He talks about how he'd been at war when Katherine first came to Mystic Falls, but how he'd fallen for her from practically the first minute he saw her. It hadn't been until later that Stefan's affections for her seemed to appeal to her more, and then of course, the Council had rounded her and everyone else up.

Damon and Stefan died, and then lived again, and parted ways.

Then he tells her about Katherine's return, their kiss on the front porch when he'd thought she was Elena, and then the next day when she'd told him that she'd never loved him.

"That was why you were so upset that night, in my bedroom," Elena says, her hand touching his face gently, like at any moment, he might go off again.

"It was a lot of things. But yes, a lot of it was her. But even that, even the worst possible thing I could do didn't keep you out of my head, or my heart. And you forgave me. Like you always do. Like you probably shouldn't."

He shakes his head, and continues without her prompting him. "When I killed her, the only thought in my head was for you. But after I left here--after I left you--I realized that when I killed Katherine, I killed that part of myself, too. The part that could just exist, but not live. I finally got what Stefan was talking about."

"Rose, too," Elena says softly. She climbs into his lap and puts her head against his shoulder.

"It was you, though, Elena. You're who made me want to live again. You make me want to be alive. But it's never going to be easy."

"I know," she says, snuggling into him.

"So. We're really going to do this, then?" he asks.

"Yes," she murmurs.

"And what will we do about this eternity thing?"

"We'll figure that out when I get to be about 24." He feels her lips on his throat. "And until then, I'm going to be a college student, and you're going to be my boyfriend."

He presses his lips to her forehead. "Will you let me read what you wrote?" he asks.

"Maybe someday," she sing-songs, and she starts laughing because his fingers attack her sides. They fumble around on the bed until he's got her pinned down again, and they're both panting, but it's more from arousal than it is from wrestling.

Damon makes love to her slowly, agonizingly, making her beg him for it, holding out until his own desire is so paper thin that he can barely control himself.

She cries his name, and arches her throat, whether consciously or not, until he can practically taste her blood singing in her veins for him. He rakes his teeth over her neck and she says, "Please," and he bites her without strictly meaning to.

She seizes up around him, so he thinks she likes it, and he stops drinking from her before he can cause any damage to her. He throws his head back and then his orgasm roars through him, and he wonders, if maybe one day, this is what she'll choose.

(Maybe she does love him enough to want to live forever.)

She curls herself around him sleepily and he puts his hand to the wound in her neck. "I'm sorry," he says.

"I'm not," she murmurs. Then she slumbers in his arms, as trusting and beautiful as only Elena can be.

* * *

That autumn, they move to Atlanta and find an apartment to share. (They have more breakdowns in bed, like, "Where were you for that whole year?" But the answers become less important as they both settle into what they are together. Elena stops worrying--and denying that she's worried--that he might leave again, and truth be told, so does Damon.)

At Christmastime, Elena gives him a book filled with the essays she wrote in her Creative Writing class the previous spring. (He reads them voraciously, then exclaims, "You knew I compelled you?!" She just smiles and asks, "How did you get that out of what I wrote when I never state it explicitly?" But he knows, even though it's beautifully hidden in prose that is, in his opinion, as good as any of those _classic_ novels that they both love. Only he can fully decipher what she's saying, because she said it about him.

Later, it occurs to him and he says, incredulous, "You let that Tate kid read all _this?_ ")

Three years after that she graduates with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, and they travel for a year, spending time in England, a long stretch of it in the Moors.

When she comes to him, certain that she wants to become a vampire, he no longer worries she doesn't know what she's getting into.

He got over that a long time ago.

And besides, they're writing their own story; it can end any way they like.


End file.
